Thursday 7 January 2016

How to get your resume noticed ..Are you preparing a new resume for the new year ?




It may be very urgent indeed that you get a job, but you are far from being the only one and considering the vast numbers of applicants that there can be for any job advertised, it is important that you put together a resume or CV that will stand out and get you an interview.

Unless there is a closing date listed in the job advertisement, many jobs go quickly, almost as soon as they are advertised, and time is of the essence, considering that quite likely there will be hundreds of others applying for the same job.

Instead of trying to put a resume together from what you have heard are good ways to go about it and things that should be on it and staring at a blank word document or piece of paper, the best way to go about it is to make use of the many resume / CV building resources such as free templates and builders that are available online by Googling Free CV builder and /or Free CV template. Many of the templates available online are job specific, but when writing a resume or CV from scratch, or the first one you have done for many years, what is needed is a generic version, which can be uploaded to your profile on Job search boards such as Monster, Indeed and Total jobs. This generic version will even maybe have you headhunted by employers who see it online and will contact you about vacancies, it can also be adapted when you apply for specific roles. 

                                    

                                 Image courtesy of phasinphoto  at FreeDigitalPhotos.net



Your resume or CV is quite likely to be the first chance you have of making an impression on a potential employer or the hiring staff and it has to be good or you will get no further. be careful not to send something that is obviously just copied and pasted from the Internet. Be sure that your resume highlights your experience and if this is a targeted resume, your experience and qualifications for that specific role.

The aim of your resume or CV is to get you through the selection process, get an interview and then to get you the job, there is no point just making do as for each job you apply for, you will only get one chance to get attention and be noticed among all the other applicants. It can be a long hard struggle indeed to get a job in the current market and it is important that your resume or CV stands out and gets noticed

You have only 15-30 seconds at most and often now just five, to get the attention of and make an impression on a hiring manager due to the vast numbers of applicants they receive for each position. It may well even be that it is not a human who reads it at all but scanning software that is programmed to pick out the applications with the right words for the job, so you need to know what they are and what is being looked for. If your application is read by a hiring manager or any member of staff responsible for recruitment you need to have them set your application aside and have them make the decision to contact you within those first few seconds, if the first two lines do not do it, the rest will quite likely not be read at all

Are you tired of being rejected from one application after another? Are you just firing your resume or CV off online to job after job to keep the Job centre advisers happy so that they will see that you are applying for jobs and you will get your job seekers allowance, but that in fact your applications have no spark and make this obvious? Employers know a desperate applicant when they see one ….

Certainly, the economy has made it more difficult to get a job but often this is not the main reason why you are having such problems, but rather your resume /CV is to blame and does not do you justice.

There is a lot of help out there both online and from Work programs and job clubs, often operating in local libraries and community center’s …Don’t be afraid of preparing your resume or CV, have confidence in it, let it do what it is supposed to do ...to sell you ...and then know that you have as much chance as you could have of getting that job. 

Valerie Hedges 

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